Page 32 of A Sunwoven Ascent

Before Kaldrek could snap back, three shapes coalesced ahead, too solid to be coincidence. Human forms, pale gray, standing in a loose arc that blocked the path like a casual invitation. They didn’t look like villagers. They looked like echoes of people. Skin stretched too tight over bone. Eyes too black. Smiles too wide.

Kaldrek slowed just enough to read them, to map angles and exits, to smell the cold decay under their flesh.

“Alpha,” the center one said aloud, voice thrilled. “We have been waiting.”

Kaldrek did not answer. He lunged. The Noskari dissolved into mist at the last instant, slipping past his teeth like smoke, reforming behind him in a laugh of shadows.

They wanted him to chase.

They wanted him to go deeper.

Why me? he asked himself.

In answer, the voices whispered back. “Because you can hold what others cannot. Because you will survive what would break them.”

They began to steer him with their presence. A figure formed to the left, only to vanish. Another took shape to the right and fled the moment he turned. Each time Kaldrek shifted course, they adjusted. Each time he tried to circle back, one appeared just long enough to draw him onward again. Holden stayed close at his flank, teeth flashing in the dark, yet the ground between them and the village kept widening all the same.

“Go south,” they coaxed. “Take what is yours. Your power needs the source. It will make you stronger than any of them.”

Why did they care what power he carried? It reeked of a trap.

Kaldrek’s hackles lifted. At last he slowed, refusing to be drawn another step. He planted his paws in the grass and raised his head, a low growl rolling from his chest. Holden stopped beside him at once, ready.

The night fell still.

For one suspended breath, the whispers quieted, as though resistance had caught them off guard. Then three shapes burst from the dark at once.

Noskari bodies hit Kaldrek from three sides, all claws and weight and teeth. He snapped at the first and caught only a shoulder, diseased blood smearing his tongue as it tore free. Another slashed across his side. The third came from above, faster than it should have been, claws driving for the vulnerable place beneath his jaw.

Kaldrek twisted, but not fast enough. Claws found his throat, tearing straight into the freshly healed wound that still ached when he swallowed. Pain burst white behind his eyes as the Noskari ripped through the weakened flesh with cruel precision, as though they had been waiting for that exact place.

Warm blood poured down his chest, steaming in the cold. Kaldrek stumbled, his legs buckling as he fought to stay upright, fought to drag air through the sudden flood of agony in his throat.

Holden hit them with a snarl, slamming into one attacker hard enough to send it skidding. Teeth sank deep. Bone cracked. But the other two were already retreating, dissolving into mist the moment they had done what they came to do, leaving Kaldrek bleeding into the dirt.

He hit the ground hard, the world pitching with him.

Each breath came wet. Blood filled his mouth. The cold land beneath him bit deep, and for one wild instant his wolf instincts screamed at him to rise, to run, to fight, to live. His body would not answer.

A delighted whisper brushed his ear. “This is the beginning,” it breathed. “This healing you now crave will be the trigger.”

Kaldrek’s vision blurred at the edges. The voice threaded through the haze like both promise and curse.

“When the kin touches you again,” it murmured, “your true power will wake.”

Kaldrek tried to answer, but only a torn rasp left him.

“We will come for you again,” the voice whispered. “Kaldrek… son of Vaelora.”

Then the darkness scattered, leaving him on the frozen ground, blood soaking into the soil. Holden’s snarls faded at the edge of hearing as he fought to reach him, the village impossibly far away, the cold closing over him like a mouth.

Chapter 16

Evelyne burst from the lodge, wrenching free of Nathan’s hands as though they weighed nothing. He had been waiting for it, already positioned like a wall the moment alarm flared down the bond. He had seen the change in her face the instant it struck.

Not again.

She would not endure this a second time. Not the hollow terror. Not the awful helplessness of feeling her mate’s pain without seeing what was being done to him. Agony tore through their connection in a savage wave, just as it had the other night. Only now she was nowhere near Kaldrek. She could not tell whether he was bleeding, choking, or dying—